Teaching is a Privilege!

Teaching really is a privilege!

When I teach I also learn.  I probably learn more than the students do in class. Why? Because I have to teach myself (or learn from others) whatever process or technique I am going to share.  I need to have experienced it for myself and know how it feels, looks, tastes (maybe not), smells, and sounds. When I can do all that I think that I might have enough knowledge to actual impart the technique to others. Even with all that preparation I often am still learning as I share the technique with others.  My students teach me too! This wonderful process of learning, sharing and learning more is what I love, love, love about teaching.

This fall I have been focusing on shading Zentangle because I want to improve my skill AND because I was scheduled to teach a 4-week class at North Island College to a group of eager and attentive seniors. I have already shared with this audience some of my samples, but today I would like to share those of the students.

First we learned to draw freehand a pumpkin string and then fill it with tangles.  Next we shaded the tangles and the pumpkin roundness.

Another lesson was about light source and we focused on adding great shadows.

Another lesson included adding dimension by the shape and direction of our line before adding shading.

and finally, we explored shading with coloured pencil using three shades of the same colour.

I had a wonderful time and while I was learning more about shading I was also learning more about teaching.  

Any comments you make about this post will be shared with my students.  Thanks for stopping by and as always have a great day!

NancyD

Zentangle on My Mind

I've had Zentangle on my mind and in my art bag this last month.  I took my Micron pens and Zentangle tiles with me on vacation to California in October and had a great time tangling and drawing whatever my pen wanted to draw.  I have also been posting on my Facebook page without making a blog post (sorry!).

https://www.facebook.com/Crafting-Passions-210565732313545/

This post is a little catchup on what I have been drawing and doing since the Tangle Island Retreat in September.

This was an exercise in Inapod tangle and shading. I have found the greatest Fb page - https://www.facebook.com/groups/shadingzentangle/.  It is all about shading and Eni Oaken provides excellent feedback and encouragement for everything that we post.

Here is another sample showing the before and after shading. The tangle is Hamadox, a combination of Rick's Paradox and Hamail.

Here is one I just finished and posted last night with Verve, Abundies, Flux, Diva Dance and Printemps.

I have also been working with a little bit of color and working on stretching my drawing a bit.  I received a little Prima journal in a mystery box and have dedicated it to the Crazy Birds and what I might do with them.  In this case, I drew a tree around them and added the Tangle Poke Root for the leaves.  It is all colored with my new Irojiten colored pencils.

Lastly, I will show you a drawing I did to emphasize color shading in a class I am teaching at North Island College this month.  The tangle is simple (can't even remember the name), but I have used it to show using three pencil shades of one color - light, medium and dark, to work out the shading.

Well, I think that is enough catchup for today.  Hopefully, my next post will be about a scrapbook that I have been working on for Christmas/Winter snow family pictures.

Have a great day!

NancyD